Wednesday, March 13, 2013

I have a question regarding close reading and struggling
adolescent readers. What I’ve read about close reading suggests that
students should first read the text independently. I’m wondering if this
still applies when students are reading significantly below grade level (2-5
years). Is reading the text aloud and modeling thinking (around Key Ideas
and Details) during the first read ever appropriate?

Thanks in advance for your response!

Thanks for your letter.

Be very careful of what you read about close reading. It is not
a teaching technique; when people try to make it into one, they tend to reveal
all kinds of biases and funny beliefs (my guess is that many of them don’t know
much about close reading and they’re scrambling now to make you think they are “experts”
about it). Close reading is an outcome. You want students to be able to read
texts—without a lot of external information from teachers or publishers—getting
what the text says, how it works, and what it means (including my critical
response, my sense of how it connects with other texts, etc.).

There is no single way to accomplish this—and there is no
research showing that some particular way has worked best. Close reading has
never been a major emphasis in the teaching of reading to children (except in
the Junior Great Books program), and when it was the major approach emphasized
in college and high school English Departments, social science research was not
a common means of evaluating instructional effectiveness.

Though it isn’t a teaching technique or method, since we want
our kids to be close readers, it makes sense that in some of our reading
lessons we would have students engage in such practices; if you never do it,
how will you get good at it? The idea is to engage students in such practices
so that they will carry the practices forward.

Everyone agrees that close reading includes multiple readings
(even if those re-readings are only of portions of the text); everyone agrees
that close reading means looking not just at what a text says, but how it says
it (close reading treats text as a unity—what the author says and how he/she
says it are viewed as connected, so you have to see these connections to fully
understand the text); and everyone also agrees that a teacher’s major input
needs to be made through asking students about the text (thus, drawing their
attention to things that might be missed, confused, etc.) rather than telling
kids what the text says. Beyond that you have a lot of latitude in these
lessons.

However, there is more going on in reading lessons than close
reading, and it is critical that teachers remember that, too. For example, a
close reading interpretative stance is a good one, but it won’t be of much use
if students can’t actually decode the text (“if someone would just come and
read this text to me I could do one hell of a close reading”).

Some “experts” do suggest reading the text aloud to the
students, because it is easier to focus their attention. I have no doubt that
it is easier to manage when the teacher does the reading or when there is some
form of round robin, and yet, if you take those approaches, when do students
learn to read text themselves? During their college and career years? Too late.

The key is to remember what you are trying to teach, and, yes,
close reading is one of the things
you are trying to teach. However, if kids can only do that with relatively easy
texts or with texts that you read to them, then you will have failed.

Also, pay a lot of attention to the texts themselves. I stress
the idea of reading a text three times (that is trying to resolve the key
idea/details, craft/structure, meaning and integration), and, yet, with some
texts you can accomplish all three in a single read (not great texts for close
reading), in others twice would be sufficient, and in still others it might
take you more than three reads to do these three things (“I had to read the
text twice on my second read”).

If you think about what you are trying to accomplish and you pay
attention to the depth and quality of texts (so that you aren’t beating dead
horses with some thin texts or skimming over the surfaces of the challenging
ones), you will need to vary your instructional choices. You won’t be able to
follow anyone’s scheme step-by-step.

Yes, it is okay to model a close listening (or viewing) rather than a close reading to show kids how
it works and what you have in mind. However, most of the time close reading
requires kids to actually do the reading (unless you plan on hanging out with
them from now on to do their reading for them—I’m sure the PARCC and Smarter
Balanced people will love that). The trick is to scaffold the readings and
re-readings sufficiently to allow these students to participate successfully—they
have to do the reading and thinking, you can’t do it for them.

If they are far behind as readers, I would consider starting
with some fluency preparation before you take on a particular text—don’t worry
much about the comprehension yet—just getting them reading and rereading the
text aloud, perhaps with a partner, resolving words, figuring out sentences.
Or, try parsing the text for the students (dividing up the various noun
phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, etc. to help them make it sound
like language). When this has been done, then you can turn your attention to a
“first reading”—that is a first reading in which they are really trying to
understand what is going on. Of course, you don’t have to do this “first
reading” from beginning to end (though in some instances that might be a good
idea), so you can have kids read a page or a paragraph or section and then
discuss that, guiding them to understand what the text says with your
questions. On later reads, you might do a bit of this work for them—so if you
want them to pay special attention to the second sentence or the third
paragraph or the part where the author describes Aunt Polly, you might read
that portion aloud to the students (but, of course, this is after they have already
read the text and have a pretty good idea of what it says).

I think the key is being purposeful, flexible, and strategic in
your planning and teaching. If you do that, you might make some mistakes, but
your kids will also likely learn to be thoughtful readers capable of conducting
their own close reads of even challenging texts.

[I noted my displeasure with much that has been written
about close reading. A notable exception is the recent article published by
Kathleen Hinchman and David Moore in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy. Although I have some minor bones to pick with them about the history
of close reading (the Post-Structuralists were not proposing a different
approach to close reading, but an alternative approach to thinking about texts,
in which the reader does not seek unities, but inconsistencies and
contradictions, and in which external lenses are not to be shunned). Beyond such trivial quibbling however, the article is valuable and
should be read widely.]

4 comments:

Tracy S
said...

How do I make my HS students read a text three times? I have tried it in one or two sittings and even spreading it out with a break day in between. Their response is always the same:I read it already. If I can get them to return to the text a second or third time, how can I ensure that they are actually reading it repeatedly? They certainly grasp the concept of looking back to answer a question or to find text evidence, but to say it truly is "close reading" is proving difficult, if not impossible.I have successly moved away from too many factual DOK level 1 questions and might pose something like, "Expalin the author's purpose for including the use of lighting techniques in his production notes." or "How does speaker devlop and advance his argument using the Rhetorical Triangle?". The students will refer to and cite the text in posing answers, but I know from watching them that they are not actually engaging with the text the 2nd or 3rd time.

I think it is useful to give students early on a specific but open-ended task for the three levels. In the first reading, note things that are surprising (that is, at odds with prior experience)or confusing (first reading)and if possible pose questions about them. Second reading, mark passages that help resolve your questions, and statements that seem most important. Treating reading in stages also helps struggling students avoid the panicky "this is too hard, I give up" response.

Good idea, Margo. (For those who don't know, Margo worked on the Junior Great Books program for a long time and she has long been a proponent of engaging children in the practices of close reading. She is truly a veteran in that area).

Remember, not every text is worth reading multiple times. Sometimes the depth of a text can be plumbed in a single reading (or in a reading and then going back to find specifics to answer a question). Let the text dictate how deeply you probe. Typically, you can tell if a text is deep enough for this if there is so much going on in it that you find that you can't get all of it in a single read--in other words, when someone asks certain questions about it, your response is along the lines, "Gee, I hadn't noticed that or hadn't thought about that, let me look again." It sounds like these texts are pretty self evident (the kids get what they are saying and how they work on a single read, and then they are able to just go back and find the information). Certainly, presenting to students the idea of the different purposes for each of the reads might help. This time try to get at what the author is telling us (make sure you can summarize that and that you know all the key points he/she was making). This time, since you already know what the text says, I want you to focus on what choices the author has made and how those help or hinder getting across those main ideas and what is this author doing differently than other texts like this that we have read?

Timothy Shanahan

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About Me

Timothy Shanahan is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he was Founding Director of the Center for Literacy and chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. He is also visiting research professor at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is principal investigator of the National Title I Study of Implementation and Outcomes: Early Childhood Language Development. Professor Shanahan was director of reading for the Chicago Public Schools. His research emphasizes reading-writing relationships, reading assessment, and improving reading achievement. He is past president of the International Reading Association. In 2006, he received a presidential appointment to serve on the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Literacy. He was inducted to the Reading Hall of Fame in 2007. He is a former first-grade teacher.